Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (1973)

director Christopher Speethviewed: 09/07/2016

I knew zero, zilch, nada, nil about Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood going in. It was recently added to Fandor, whose cult film selection is very good, so I quickly added it to my queue. I love all kinds of cult films. Obscurity is a treasure.

I had no idea.

I maybe still have no idea.

Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood was a cult film thought lost to time until maybe five to ten years ago. Apparently made for the Southern drive-in circuit, it was an independent production that came and went and disappeared, made perhaps notable by an early appearance by Hervé Villechaize in some seemingly randomness.

This film, though, is almost impossible to describe from one viewing. I need to watch this again. Taking place in an amusement park, haunted by vampires, ghouls, weirdos, you name it, it’s a mixture of ineptitude verging headily into the broadly surrealistic. It’s like naïvist art, the bad becomes sublime.